Sales Ramp & Velocity
Great blog post from the TAS Group on the vital factors associated with increasing your sales velocity (i.e., sales ramp): http://sales20network.com/blog/?p=962
Do You Know a ‘Chance Gardner’ Consultant?
One of my favorite movies is “Being There” starring Peter Sellers. If you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest that you rent it, as the movie and cast won numerous awards for their performance and wonderful story. I’ll paraphrase the story by saying that a simple-minded gardener (Chance Gardner) is thrust in to the outside…
The Context Behind the Data
Metrics are good. They can be valuable and you can glean insight from them. But my admonition to all is that you proceed with caution when it comes to using metrics and data to make business decisions. All too frequently, I see business leaders completely absorbed in spreadsheets and reports. Percentages, conversion ratios and growth…
Lets all cough together: our prescription for sales and marketing alignment.
It seems that sales and marketing alignment, unlike a doctors exam, is something everybody wants to do. It feels like we get an email a day from Marketo or Eloqua on alignment issues, ranking as a topic only slightly behind insights on how to integrate social media into the mix. The esteemed CSO Insights and…
Go To Market Strategy-Are You a Firewalker?
Whether you are a startup going to market for the first time, or a F1000 company introducing a new product or service, figuring out the right go to market strategy is hard. That challenge is only exacerbated when you conduct all of your analysis and planning purely from the marketing perspective and omit the sales…
“Super time sensitive – pls open up now”
Couldn’t resist that headline? How about the puppy? Aaawwwww. Someone marketing-wise once told me to always have flags, puppies or kids in any marketing materials. I hate to admit that it works, even if it is a little hard sometimes to fit a puppy into a data center disaster backup scenario. With a little creativity…
A marketing viewpoint on sales and marketing dysfunctions
So, we’ve all been there if you have worked in a Fortune 500 company. The sales regional managers are in town. Everyone knows it. They make sure everyone does. Heads will roll. Deals will be made. Side meetings are happening all over the cafeteria and regional chiefs walk by with ear on phone nodding at…
The top 3 deadly sins in dysfunctional sales & marketing
I feel like a relationship counselor writing this blog post but most of the technology companies that I’ve worked with over the past 20+ years have had a dysfunctional relationship between sales and marketing. The only thing that varies is how severe the dysfunction is between the two groups. Open disclaimer, I am an unabashed…
Who changed the sales funnel?
Ah the proverbial sales funnel. All of us in sales have lived by it and some of us have died by it in our careers. What is it? Has it changed? Who changed it? The sales funnel is a metric driven tool used to measure sales conversion ratios. That is to say the percentage that…
Do you know where your sales pipeline is?
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a television public service announcement campaign that asked: “Parents, it is 10:00 p.m. Do you know where your children are?” All sales execs are asking themselves the same question about their sales pipelines. Unfortunately, the issue is that you know where your sales pipeline is, and it isn’t…